7 replies to this topic

[FarscapeOne]

A new signal appears, prompting Stamets' emotional return to the mycelial network and leading Burnham, Pike and Owosekun to a pre-warp planet, where they face a complex ethical dilemma. Tilly's overeagerness lands her in trouble but when the planet – and Discovery's landing party – are threatened, her curiosity may be the one thing that can save them.

[Jorgasnarova]

Superb episode, probably the most TNG or TOS like Discovery has managed so far.  Lots of lovely easter eggs in this episode....the transporter operator wearing what might be an early version of Geordi LaForge's VISOR, to the revelation that Pike's parents were both scientific and religious scholars, which gives greater impact to the virtual hellscape Pike suffered through in "The Cage" via the Talosians.  "From a fable you once heard in childhood."  And, hey, the anonymous background nobodies on the bridge are finally getting back stories.  Nifty.

[FarscapeOne]

I am loving how Owosekun, Detmer, and Airiam are getting more to do.  They are important bridge crewmembers, and were sorely overlooked in season 1.  I understand the need for that season to establish the primaries and the world, etc.  But that also went along with my issue with not fully taking advantage of the lack of time limit format inherent to online.

This episode FELT like STAR TREK to me.  I am thoroughly enjoying this season so far.

A side thought... could the Red Angel be one of The Preservers?

Edited by FarscapeOne, 05 March 2019 - 01:02 PM.

[Christopher]

FarscapeOne, on 05 March 2019 - 12:59 PM, said:

A side thought... could the Red Angel be one of The Preservers?

People have a strange desire to perceive the Preservers as godlike aliens with limitless powers, when all they really did was ship some people from one planet to another and stick a deflector beam generator on their planet -- all well within the capabilities of the 24th-century Federation at most. Not to mention that they were so incompetent that their idea of "preserving" people was to stick them in the middle of an asteroid field, give them only a single defense beam (what if an asteroid comes in from the other side of the planet?) and only tell one guy how to work the thing. I don't know why people want to read so much into them beyond that.

For that matter, the Preservers had the exact same mission as the Vians in "The Empath" -- to relocate endangered populations to new planets -- so why has nobody (except me) ever suggested that they were one and the same? Perhaps because they mistake the Preservers for an ancient, long-extinct race, even though the Native American populations they transplanted would not have been simultaneously endangered (or existed in forms that Spock would recognize as those specific tribes) until the 17th-18th centuries, making the Preservers a modern entity rather than an ancient one.

[FarscapeOne]

I never thought of The Preservers as limitless powered people.  Just super advanced.  I think the Red Angel is along the same lines, which follows why Clarke's Law was quoted.

And I did say 'one' of the Preservers, not the whole race.  For all we know, it really is just one... the same one appearing throughout time.  This would not be difficult for a time traveller, though I loathe the idea that it is a time traveller.

[Christopher]

FarscapeOne, on 05 March 2019 - 01:54 PM, said:

I never thought of The Preservers as limitless powered people.  Just super advanced.

But that's just it -- why do people assume they're "super-advanced" when their powers as actually depicted are so limited? Sure, their deflector beam was a lot more powerful than the Enterprise's, but that's reasonable to expect for a ground installation vs. a ship-mounted one, even without any relative difference in advancement.

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And I did say 'one' of the Preservers, not the whole race.  For all we know, it really is just one... the same one appearing throughout time.  This would not be difficult for a time traveller, though I loathe the idea that it is a time traveller.

Yes, but why the Preservers specifically, out of all the many advanced races we've seen in Trek? Why not a Metron or a Thasian or a Tkon or whatever? For some reason, whenever there's a mystery in the Trek universe, people want it to be the Preservers, even when it has absolutely nothing in common with the single known instance of Preserver activity. Why them? It seems arbitrary.

[FarscapeOne]

Okay, so maybe it is one of Tkon or even one of Trelane's race.

I just said it was a side thought, not a full on theory.  No need to give it the third degree.

[Christopher]

Sorry -- it's not about you. It's just a perennial pet peeve of mine, this strange tendency in fandom to imagine all sorts of things about the Preservers that aren't suggested by or consistent with the text, or that are hyping them up far more than they really deserve based on what we actually know. I keep wondering why it's that group of aliens in particular that gets so much projected onto it. I guess it's just because so little is actually known about them, so they're basically a blank slate.